Eliot Brown

Columbia has paid $14.8 million for a warehouse in the footprint of its planned West Harlem expansion, closing on a deal from 2007 with the owners of Despatch Moving & Storage, according to property records. The sale price equates to about $235 per square foot, based on figures from the real estate tracking service PropertyShark, which puts the size of the building at 62,200 square feet.  read more »

With a do-or-die City Council vote approaching, today has already brought two tidbits in the fight over the Willets Point redevelopment: A new promotional video by a city-sponsored group, and a rally critical of the plan by affordable housing advocates.

The video, commissioned by the Flushing/Willets Point/Corona Local Development Corporation, paints a cheery picture of the development as a series of business leaders and elected officials supportive of the plan laud its merits.

The protest, scheduled to be going on midday by City hall, is organized by affordable housing groups ACORN and the Pratt Center for Community Development, which promised appearances by elected officials.

For the multi-billion dollar plan pushed by the Bloomberg administration, judgment day is nearing. The City Council has a hearing scheduled later this month, and a vote could conceivably come before November (though it must happen before December), and for now, the administration and the Council are far apart.  read more »

Ed Malloy, president of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York, just gave his thumbs up to extending term limits to keep Mayor Bloomberg in office.

From a statement released by Mr. Malloy's office:

"Should the Council of the City of New York vote to amend term limits, the continuing services of Mayor Bloomberg would certainly put the reins of government in steady hands and give us the strong and competent leadership we need to rise to the occasion of our current circumstances."  read more »

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The response of the mayor and the Port Authority's executive director, Chris Ward: The market will decide that, but the infrastructure will be in place.

"The market will respond as it needs to respond," Mr. Ward said at a press conference with Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Paterson. "We will have available those sites and those foundations to Larry's team to meet the market."

In his long-term lease with the Port Authority, Mr. Silverstein is required to complete his buildings by 2013. Should he not finish any individual building by its required completion date, he would be in default of his lease, and the Port Authority could claim all three buildings.  read more »

Target dates at the World Trade Center have been moved by months and years for the more than $16 billion project, with the target end-date for the Port Authority to finish all of the site's components by the end of 2013, the agency announced today.

Delays have been known publicly for months, and since June the Port Authority, which owns the site, has been working to resolve about 15 outstanding issues in order to set a new public schedule and budget for the project.  read more »

The story was reported by Max Abelson, Eliot Brown and Dana Rubinstein; and written by Ms. Rubinstein.

New York's real estate community doesn't just love Mayor Bloomberg. It lurves him. And it's greeting the news of his third-term bid accordingly.

A sampling:

"Love him," said developer and landlord Alex Sapir. "Let's keep him forever."

"It's the best news I've heard in years," said residential superbroker Michelle Kleier, president and chairman of Gumley Haft Kleier.

"I can't think of anyone who's done more for New York... in my lifetime," said Howard Lorber, chairman of Prudential Douglas Elliman owner.

"I think he's the greatest mayor we've ever had," said Douglas Durst, of the Durst Organization. Mr. Durst even thinks President Bush should call Mr. Bloomberg down to Washington to "straighten out the financial mess."

"I think the country needs him more than the city does," he said.

Thirty-something Dumbo developer Jed Walentas called Mr. Bloomberg, "the best mayor New York has had - certainly in my lifetime."

And Donald Trump said he begs the mayor ("Michael," to him) to run whenever they meet.

"Any time I see Michael I say, please run," Mr. Trump said. "I don't want to get into the details, but any time I see him. I think it's very important."

So what gives? Why all the love for Massachusetts' own, Michael Bloomberg?  read more »

The Port Authority is slated to recommend a closure of the No. 1 train south of Chambers Street for a series of months, likely during the summer, according to multiple people familiar with the agency's plans.

The recommendation is expected to be part of the Port Authority's report on dates and budgets, which will likely announce the rebuilding effort is facing around $1.7 billion in cost overruns.

The closure would not be unprecedented, as the M.T.A. has closed the train for many weekends south of Chambers Street to help construction efforts, running shuttle buses between South Ferry and Chambers. But the length of the closure would be certain to frustrate commuters from Staten Island and could cause complications with the service on the 1/2/3 lines.  read more »

In the first weeks of 2007, the two new state officials responsible for Lower Manhattan’s redevelopment were called to a downtown meeting on risks regarding the World Trade Center rebuilding. In the final months of the Pataki administration, the city- and state-run Lower Manhattan Construction Command Center had undertaken an analysis to highlight potential roadblocks at the World Trade Center site, and with new officials at the helm, a briefing seemed in order.

The officials—the eventual chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, Avi Schick, and the Port Authority’s executive director, Tony Shorris, along with Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff from the city—arrived at the 29th floor, LMCCC’s headquarters, and sat to watch a PowerPoint with a less than optimistic theme.  read more »

As the Port Authority gears up for its big bare-all report Thursday on World Trade Center dates and costs, the price tag of the site stands to rise significantly.

According to numerous people familiar with discussions, the Port Authority is planning to announce the total amount in overruns is about $1.7 billion for the whole site. The amount presents the public sector with a large gap to fill in a time of strained budgets; however, the dollar figure is not quite as cataclysmic as early reports suggested, which put the gap at as much as $3 billion.

The overruns apply to the public sector portion of the site, which includes the Freedom Tower, the Santiago Calatrava-designed PATH hub, the common infrastructure, the vehicle screening center, the memorial, and the museum (but not the three Larry Silverstein-built towers).  read more »

In a push for the redevelopment of Willets Point, a group of 75 business leaders, elected officials, industry representatives and others wrote the City Council this week a letter that urged the body to approve the city's proposed rezoning, an act it must take up within the next two months.

The letter, reported this morning in the Post, said that, "after more than 50 years of unsuccessful attempts the clean-up of Willets Point is at hand and we as community leaders face a historic opportunity."

The letter came in response to a statement of opposition to the plan by the majority of the Council. Check out the PDF here and here.

Extell Development has dropped its push to bring Costco to its planned "Riverside Center" site on the Upper West Side, part of the larger Riverside South development by the West Side Highway.

The developer told elected officials this morning that the planned store was off the table, dropping a controversial element of their plan, which calls for up to 2,500 apartments in a series of five towers between 59th and 61st streets.

From the West Side Spirit:

"Gary Barnett has heard the concerns of the community, the community board, and elected officials as well as City Planning Commission Chair Amanda Burden and her staff and has therefore eliminated Costco and 500 parking spaces from Riverside Center," said George Arzt, Extell's spokesman.

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Here's Mayor Bloomberg on his Friday morning radio show with John Gambling on the World Trade Center and the Port Authority's commitment to open the memorial by Sept. 11, 2011:

We all agree that the critical thing is that we have to have on the 10th anniversary of 9/11 the Memorial built with people being able to get to it--the platform, the water cascading down, the trees, the names. The museum underground can take a little bit longer and it will just because of the complexity of the problem. ... The governor and I have both said to [Port Authority executive director Chris Ward] we want the Port to guarantee any cost overruns over that, because otherwise you don't have any confidence they will, but you have to give them an economic incentive.

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After receiving community pressure last year after it wanted to raze some Brooklyn houses that may or may not have been part of the Underground Railroad, the city has announced the outline of a $2 million commemoration of abolitionist efforts in Brooklyn.

The result, a year after the city announced the $2 million commitment, will be a project called "In Pursuit of Freedom," which will have an "artistic installation," a self-guided walking tour, a theatrical performance, "interpretative exhibits," and a Web site.

The controversy arose when the city had targeted for demolition houses on Duffield Street as part of the downtown Brooklyn rezoning that may have been used as part of the Underground Railroad. The city said in December that it would not destroy the houses.  read more »

With a report due in just one week that sets new timetables for the World Trade Center redevelopment, a decision is near on one of the most complex--and controversial--elements at the site, the multibillion dollar PATH hub.

The Santiago Calatrava-designed station has been a massive headache for officials and engineers since at least early 2007, when it became clear that the design was too costly given its $2.1 billion budget and could delay multiple other elements, including the memorial, at the interconnected site given the central placement of the station. In recent months, as the Port Authority has sought to bring in new timetables, a decision on what to do with the PATH station has been at the center of discussion.  read more »

A new blog has popped up out of the ruckus surrounding the proposed redevelopment at Willets Point in Queens, the Iron Triangle Tracker, put up by Times-Ledger reporter Stephen Stirling.

From the site:

"Iron Triangle Tracker will feature profiles and up-to-the-minute news covering every facet and every opinion of the proposed project in hopes of generating a meaningful and intelligent discussion."

It's the second such blog (that we know of) to emerge specifically about the topic, the first being the pro-Bloomberg plan Develop Willets Point site, run by legislative staffer Chris McShane. (The landowners also have an active site.)

With two months until the project is due to get its make-or-break vote from the City Council, the issue has yet to have the same level of blogospheric contagion as did the Atlantic Yards plan, which spawned a slew of sites—many of them still active.

Two of the city's largest planned developments are headed to the City Council for consideration, as the Planning Commission voted this morning to approve the Willets Point and Hunter's Point South developments in Queens. The two Bloomberg administration-led rezoning plans would permit the development of more than 10,000 apartments, though many on the Council have publicly resisted Willets Point.

The planning commission voted 11-1 and 12-0 in favor of, respectively, Willets Point and Hunter's Point South, according to a Department of City Planning spokeswoman, an unsurprising vote given that the board is controlled by mayoral appointees. The one vote against came from the representative for Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum.  read more »

Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to create and preserve 165,000 units of below-market rate housing over 10 years is one of the more ambitious initiatives of his administration, and indeed he touted its merits Tuesday at a press conference announcing that the plan had passed its halfway mark.

But as the financial industry hits major turbulence and the city’s once lush climate for development turns dry, the Bloomberg administration is struggling to meet its goals for new construction (currently targeted at 91,637 units) and will likely need to shift the balance more toward preservation (73,395 units).

More than five years since the mayor rolled out the plan in an earlier form, the city has no doubt exceeded expectations in preserving affordable apartments, counting more than 50,000 units in that category.  read more »

Mayor Bloomberg and Shaun Donovan, commissioner of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, today announced that the city's 10-year plan [PDF] to build or preserve 165,000 units of below-market rate housing has hit is midpoint, with 82,500 units financed [press release here].

Among the stats the city highlighted was its strikingly low foreclosure rate. Of the 17,109 homeownership units in the plan (most are rental, similar to the overall ratio citywide), just five have faced foreclosure.

Why?

The city keeps its owners on a shorter leash than the private market, steering buyers clear of subprime mortgages and other loans that could allow them to be overextended.  read more »

In more flush times, Mayor Bloomberg took two separate high-profile steps related to property taxes in the city: he lowered the tax rate by 7 percent, and he gave homeowners citywide a $400 rebate.

Now with the economic storm clouds rolling in, Mr. Bloomberg has repeatedly suggested in the past week that he might eliminate that 7 percent cut, bringing in another $600 million or so in revenue to the city.

As for the $400 rebate, which is viewed by critics as an act that emphasized buying political goodwill more than sound policy, the mayor apparently seems reticent to remove it.  read more »

The chairman of the U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Representative Jim Oberstar of Minnesota, today pledged his support to bring in substantial federal dollars for major transit projects in the New York City area when Congress takes up a major national transportation bill next year.

Speaking at a luncheon of the Business Council of New York State and the New York Building Congress, Mr. Oberstar said he wants New York to be seen as a national model for the virtues of transportation investment.

"We need to have a grander vision, a greater sense of investment in urban America," Mr.  read more »

A former official at the city's Economic Development Corporation has been fined for accepting gifts worth thousands of dollars from a private contractor that worked on jobs under his supervision. The city's Conflicts of Interest Board today announced that Nazir Mir, a former vice president for capital construction at the EDC, has been fined $11,500. The contractor Kiska Construction--a contractor on the High Line, a project Mr. Mir supervised--gave Mr. Mir's son a free five-night stay at one of its hotels in Turkey worth about $4,000. Mr. Mir also accepted two meals worth more than $50.

According to a disposition from the COIB [  read more »

Port Authority officials rushing to create a comprehensive report on the World Trade Center redevelopment by the end of the month are getting a small reprieve. The report, which is expected to have a new timetable for the site's completion and a new (higher) price tag, was once slated for issuance Sept. 29 but is now due to be released Oct. 2.

The reason, according to a Port Authority spokesman: Rosh Hashanah, which runs Sept. 29 - Oct. 1.

After taking heat from Assemblyman Richard Brodsky earlier this week on a deal over Yankee Stadium, the city has created a mini-retort report of its own, addressing Mr. Brodsky's claims point-by-point.

Mr. Brodsky, who testified at Rep. Dennis Kucinich's Congressional hearing today on the issue, lobbed a series of accusations at the city on Tuesday when he released his report titled "The House that You Built" [click here for a PDF, along with testimony]. Among other criticisms, Mr. Brodsky charged that the city artificially boosted the appraised land value for the Yankee Stadium site so as to better qualify it for a complex tax-free financing plan.  read more »

Back in the late spring, the city added a few new slides to its Coney Island redevelopment plan PowerPoint, presumably to assuage critics, that showed successively how the core amusement area has shrunk decade after decade to become just a pitiful shadow of what it once was. With the city's planned rezoning, the pitch went, Coney could come closer to its heyday and be large and lively by historic standards.

Now with Astroland apparently headed to amusement park heaven, the city added a new slide.

"Coney Island: 2009?" the slide read, showing an overhead view with active amusements highlighted in orange, and a big swath missing where Astroland is today.  read more »

It's been something of an eminent domain-filled day so far, with three events focusing on the state and city's ability to acquire private land, particularly for economic development: First a hearing, then a press conference, and a scheduled court appearance.

Why all the fuss?

A number of the larger private development projects in the city--the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn, Columbia University's planned West Harlem expansion and the proposed redevelopment of Willets Point in Queens, to name a few--plan to use eminent domain to take property and create large, contiguous space for new development. Naturally many of the affected property owners are resistant, and some lawmakers have taken an interest in the issue, calling for more restrictions on the tool's use.  read more »

The list of mayors, governors and U.S. senators who have championed and supported the plans to expand Pennsylvania Station across the street into the Farley Post Office is a lengthy one. Daniel Moynihan, David Dinkins, Mario Cuomo, George Pataki, Rudolph Giuliani, Michael Bloomberg, Charles Schumer, Eliot Spitzer.

The project, now named Moynihan Station, has existed on paper since the early 1990s, gradually morphing from one enthusiastic administration to the next as it has consistently eluded execution. 

Now Governor David Paterson, whose administration has generally been defined by cuts and parsimony amid anemic revenues, wants his own turn with the project, and last week he pledged to succeed where prior governors have failed.  read more »

On Thursday, inside the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, D.C., two legislators will convene a hearing on the financing of New York sports stadiums. Neither are from New York City, but the duo, Assemblyman Richard Brodsky of Westchester and U.S. Representative Dennis Kucinich of Cleveland, have begun a crusade against a complex city-crafted plan to finance new stadiums and arenas for the Yankees, Mets and Nets.

At the least, the two stand to be a biting irritant to city officials and sports executives, as City Hall seeks to fight back on one news-making charge after another. But more than an annoyance, the two bring publicity, scrutiny and attention to the issue that could conceivably influence an impending ruling at the Internal Revenue Service on the matter, threatening the development of the planned $950 million Nets basketball arena in Brooklyn and additional loans for the Yankees and the Mets.  read more »

Location: The financial industry is changing before our eyes. What’s your outlook for the city’s economy in the short term and midterm?

Mr. Lieber: There’s no question that this is unprecedented in any kind of shape for Wall Street since the ’20s. So we’ve never seen anything this bad, at least not in a long, long time. But having said that … around the economy, our unemployment rate is still relatively low—5.1-ish percent right now—which is up a little bit. Our tax collections going forward are on target so far, though we still are fearful about some of that declining.

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The city and the M.T.A. officially kicked off their "select bus service" on 34th Street today, a higher-speed service that sets bus-only lanes on the street, from First Avenue to 11th Avenue.

The initiative, which ultimately envisions a partition between the bus lanes and car lanes, has been highlighted as a way to increase capacity to the far West Side as the area develops. It is now illegal for most other vehicles to travel in the bus-only lanes, recently painted red.The state Legislature did not act on a bill pushed by the city that would have allowed cameras to ticket drivers who venture into the lanes illegally, so the enforcement is left to the police.  read more »

In late 2006, the Bloomberg administration announced an initiative to build new housing on the underutilized land (parking lots and such) of select city public housing projects. Vacant, publicly owned land is now in short supply, the city reasoned. So officials began to look to the NYCHA housing projects as a city-owned resource where space was aplenty, given the "tower in the park" construction that typified the apartment complexes, with large expanses of open space and sometimes parking lots.

Now, seeking to implement the plan in Hell's Kitchen, the city is clashing with the community and elected officials, who claim the city reneged on a promise to build middle- and moderate-income housing.  read more »

The Department of City Planning has named department insider Edith Hsu-Chen as its new director of the Manhattan office, which is currently seeking to rezone a large swath of the Lower East Side.

Ms. Hsu Chen's promotion--she was previously deputy director of the borough office--comes after the departure of Ray Gastil, who left for Seattle in July.  read more »

Much of Governor Paterson's approach over the last few months has been characterized by telling New Yorkers what they will not have under a Paterson administration. There will not be flush state coffers (and there will be cuts); there will not be a finished World Trade Center by 2012; there will not be enough money to fund an M.T.A. capital plan. Money is short, campaign promises were none, so cutting back has become issue No. 1.

But today, invoking the success of projects built during the Great Depression such as the Lincoln Tunnel and much of the New York City subway system, Mr.  read more »

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a powerful voice in the redevelopment of downtown, wants the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation to stay in business, according to his spokesman.

That puts him at odds with Mayor Bloomberg, who today called in an op-ed for Governor Paterson to disband the agency, which has divvied up much of the federal money that went to Lower Manhattan following the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Dan Weiller, a spokesman for Mr. Silver, who has previously expressed support for LMDC chairman Avi Schick, had this to say this afternoon:

"Speaker Silver said that he welcomes the sense of urgency that the mayor has expressed regarding progress at ground zero.  read more »

Governor Paterson put out a statement responding to Mayor Bloomberg's Wall Street Journal op-ed today, which called for the dissolution of the state-run Lower Manhattan Development Corporation.

Absent from the governor's 204-word statement: any mention of the LMDC.

Saying that he looks forward to a report on the World Trade Center redevelopment later this month, Mr. Paterson appeared to be putting off any decision either way on the matter until October.

Statement below.

I read Mayor Bloomberg's opinion piece in this morning's Wall Street Journal and I applaud the Mayor for his leadership on this issue.

 read more »

Mayor Bloomberg called today for the dismantling of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the state's main agency involved in downtown redevelopment, advocating in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that Governor Paterson "hand over its development responsibilities to the city."

From the op-ed:

The LMDC would also turn over its responsibility for demolishing the Deutsche Bank building to the already existing Lower Manhattan Construction Command Center, a city/state entity. This would help the LMCCC prevent the delays that inevitably result from too much bureaucracy, greatly enhancing the prospects for meeting a July 2009 deadline for full demolition of the building. To increase accountability, we will push the LMCCC to establish benchmarks for progress and issue monthly reports.

 read more »

Former Governor George Pataki has been in something of a cocoon for the past 20 months, staying far away from the public spotlight. But last week at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, he emerged, mostly as a surrogate for Senator John McCain who gave speeches at delegation breakfasts and generally stayed away from New York political issues.

But on the issue of the World Trade Center redevelopment, Mr. Pataki was direct. Speaking to a small gathering of reporters, he responded to a question about whether current delays at the World Trade Center came as a result of mistakes in his administration.  read more »

The Real Deal's having a decently-loaded panel tomorrow night at Lincoln Center, hosted by Brian Sullivan of Fox Business News. On tap: Larry Silverstein, Bob Knakal, Barbara Corcoran, Steven Witkoff, Charles Kushner, and R. Donahue Peebles of the Peebles Corp.

Starts at 6:30. Info here.

The planned redevelopment and expansion of Penn Station, a top priority of the Spitzer administration, needs to include transportation improvements in order to be a "favorable investment" of the state's resources, Governor Paterson said today.

"What is essential to Moynihan Station is that it be a viable transportation hub," he said, speaking at a Crain's New York breakfast this morning. "If it doesn't include the transportation, its value diminishes considerably as far as I'm concerned."

The remarks suggest yet another turn in the project's long history, with yet another desire to expand its scope. The project, named Moynihan Station in honor of the late senator who championed it, has sat on the drawing boards since at least the early 1990s,  read more »

After making cover of both city tabloids today after he equated Albany legislators to "bloodsuckers," David Paterson backpedaled at this morning's Crain's New York breakfast and called for campaign finance reform.

This morning, speaking at the Hilton in midtown, Paterson gave more context for the remarks he made yesterday, saying that the culture of Albany allows only "well-heeled" advocacy groups with money and clout to actually win the ear of any lawmaker.

"I don't think my colleagues are bloodsuckers," he said. "What I do think is that, unfortunately, if we adopted the right kind of campaign finance, and we started to take a look at the amount of spending as it impacts the operations of government, that legislators would be empowered to see groups based on the content of their information, and not the resources they're spending in Albany.  read more »